In that first hardly noticed moment to which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be, what urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk? David Whyte My musings~ This poem speaks of what I am longing for in the solitude that I seek. I feel an urgency to tap into that “more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world” that is there for each one of us when we peel away the layers of consciousness. David Whyte suggests that upon waking you remember whom you are and how you want to express “the vitality hidden in your sleep.” This is why I come to the cottage and why I love to wake early. I recommend Roger Housden essay about this poem in "Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again."

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Contents

Elizabeth Barrett BrowningCredentials, by Daniel BerriganMorning Poem, by Mary OliverA Secret Life, by Stephen DunnTread in Solitude, by V. SchoffelDesiderata, by Max EhrmannBeannacht, by John O'DonohueThe house was quiet and the world was calm, by Wallace StevensA Garden Beyond Paradise, by RumiWe remember them, from a Jewish Book of PrayerThe Summer Day, by Mary OliverAn African Elegy, by Ben OkriVariation on a Theme by Rilke, by Denise LevertovLove of the World, Charlotte Tall MountainThe Poet's Obligation, Pablo NerudaAll True Vows, David WhyteSea Fever, John MasefieldThe Shortest Day, Jan Sutch PickardSong for the Open Road, Walt WhitmanKeep Walking, RumiFog in the Valley, Paul ZimmerBandito, Eleanor LermanThe Peace of Wild Things, Wendell BerryBut the silence in the mind , R.S. ThomasI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William WordsworthA Cloth of Fine Gold, Dorothy WaltersWeather, Fleur AdcockThe Blind Old Man, Robert BlyThe Three Goals, DavidBudbillAll Roads Lead to Me,AnonymousWith that Moon Language,HafizThe River and Its Waves areOne Surf, KabirWhat to Remember When Waking, David WhyteLove after Love, DerekWolcottLast Night As I Was Sleeping, AntonioMachado (version byRobert Blywhere we are, GeraldLocklinWild Geese, Mary OliverWhy I Wake Early, Mary OliverI heard a bird sing, Oliver HerefordI have a house where I go, A.A. MilneGoing to Walden, Mary Oliver